@ Jack:

I’ll bite – Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde could potentially be considered Science Fiction because there is at least some pretense of “science” in them. Dracula is classic horror I think. Moby Dick is… Well, partly a whaling manual. :P

That said, they are all “aged” not in the sense they are no longer relevant, but in the sense that the reader is immediately aware of how old these pieces are.

As for LOTR – Tolkien was a linguist first and foremost. If you read the linguistic apendix you can see the depth of research he did preparing to write these books. He actually invented several fictional languages, in order to build the vast mythological background, which he used in his story. His son is still releasing original LOTR related material based on previously unpublished notes. The amount of hard work that went into that trilogy is baffling – and my book store actually has a whole shelf lined with books about LOTR – as in literary analysis of the stories, the background and Tolikiens many conlags.

JK Rowling is a decent writer and her story has to be commended for promoting literacy among children but her work does not even compare to that of Tolkien. You are right, Harry Potter series will not be easy to dismiss as just pulp due to the immense cultural impact it had. Yes, it will be talked about as a cultural landmark. Yes people will write academic papers about it (I believe it has been done already) but it will be more about HP as a phenomenon, or deconstructions of book’s success. But no one is going to study Rowlings technique or linguistic patterns in her books because that stuff is just not there. Tolkien is in a way an exception to the rule.

@ Alphast:
You asked for some examples of timeless science fiction, Luke. Some titles that immediately come to my mind are: “Frankenstein (Mary Shelly),” “Dracula (Bram Stoker),” “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” (Robert Louis Stevenson), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (Edgar Allen Poe), “Young Goodman Brown” (Nathaniel Hawthorne). Many students of American Lit would also consider “Moby Dick” (Herman Melville) to fit within the SF genre, along with a few other genres. And please don’t look down your nose at the “Harry Potter” series. Like you, I discovered Tolkien in my youth. I’m 65 now, so that was a long time ago. Back when I was in college, majoring in English, Tolkien was dismissed as mere pulp fiction by my professors. However, I have heard some very distinguished English professors of late refer to “Lord of the Rings” as a “masterpiece.” Only time will tell, but I’m willing to bet that some day the “Harry Potter” series will likewise be viewed much more favorably than it is today.

And Star Wars is SF even though it’s set in the past? :D

But you make a good point nonetheless: ‘hard’ SF tried to predict the future based on today’s understanding of science and technology. This will make them at least partially dated – by definition. Charlie Stross once wrote about this on his blog: writing near-future SF is risky. The readers will find it more relatable, but the author will be proven wrong very quickly.

I think you should give it a shot, at least for the second and third. The series has 10 volumes and most of the philosophical implications are not very clear until much later. Also the multiverse seen by Zelazny is very interesting, with its own laws and “physics”. And the guy is not nearly as smug as the rest of his family and none of them is really immortal. They are just kind of super-resistant and age very slowly, but they can been killed very well. And most of their time is actually used in attempting to kill each other in rather complicated ways, so it makes for some entertainment.

@ vukodlak:

Good point – we sometimes forget that the SF/Fantasy distinction is not as clear cut. I guess there is a spectrum of works in between that could fit into either category. The traditional distinction of “future = SF even if magical, past = fantasy even if scientific” is a tad limited.

@ Alphast:

Believe it or not, but I haven’t really read that much of Zelazny. I remember reading the first (I think) Amber book, but never really looked for more. It seemed kinda silly at the time, and I remember disliking the fact that the protagonist was essentially a smug, immortal demi-god, even if amnesiac at first. Perhaps I ought to give his works another chance. Any suggestions?

I can’t believe that Zelazny is not on your list. While it could technically be argued to be on either side of the Fantasy/SF divide, I think his Amber Cycle has both the writing quality and the timelessness required to belong to future classics. I personally count it as Fantasy, and it is highly original in my humble opinion in the sense that it has absolutely nothing at all to do with either of the “fathers” of the Fantasy genre and in any case make no reference to Howard or Tolkien in any significant way.

The classification of something as SF or Fantasy always baffles me. While it’s clear that Clarke, Asimov and Stross write science fiction I’m not really sure why ‘Dune’ is considered SF as well? There’s precious little ‘science’ there, and the whole thing has a feel much closer to fantasy (magic, warrior tribes, giant wyrms worms, knife as a viable weapon…). Ditto Star Wars (the prequels’ attempt to make them more ‘sciency’ made them much, much worse). And it’s not a case of “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, more like “any sufficiently garbled technobabble is indistinguishable from mystical mumbo-jumbo…”